Montacute with Ann and Edward

Last year over Easter, Marco and I had been to Dublin. This year it was going to be London :-)
Marco was only free from work from Friday 6th of April and had booked his flight on that day. Since in Norway Easter holidays already start as early as on the Wednesday afternoon before Easter, I decided to fly already on Wednesday 4th of April to England. One of my cousins, Ann, and her husband Edward live in England. Roughly speaking I always said they'd live in greater London, but you can actually no longer call Montacute village "greater London". The 680-inhabitants perish lies some 70km between Bristol and Exeter and about 215km southwest of London.
That's why it also took me some 3-4 hours to still get from London Heathrow Airport that evening by bus and train to their place. I think I arrived somewhat close to midnight, too late for still having a long cosy evening chatting and updating each other with news. It was just time to go to bed.

Thursday, 5th of April:

Ann and Ed woke my up at around 9 a.m. and invited my to join them to enjoy a cup of morning tea in their bed. About 30 minutes later we got up and dressed and immediately went all three to walk their dog, a black labradoodle named Bronte.

Montacute House

The neighbourhood.

Only back at 11 a.m. we had our breakfast.

Ann's husband Edward has worked until recently for the National Trust, the national organisation preserving British cultural heritage such as historical or naturally beautiful places. This job had also brought Ann and Edward to this area and into that house they currently live in. Their house belongs to the National Trust and is located right next to one of the National Trust's properties: the Montacute House.

Montacute House is a country house built in 1598, a period between the medieval Gothic and Renaissance Classical architecture. It's said to be one of the finest surviving houses from the late Elizabethan era.

 

 Quick lunch at home before heading for another walk with Bronte in the area.

  

 St. Catherine Church of Montacute.

In some how Bronte managed to attract the attention of all the cows in the meadow which came running dangerously close.

Only at last second we managed to catch Bronte and escape from the meadow through the gate - leaving behind some stupidly staring cows.

  Back at home: dinner time.

We had to hurry quite a bit with our dinner as on tonight's programme was a Jive evening. This dancing evening was THE event of the week for the inhabitants of the whole Somerset area. And - as it is typical for villages in countryside locations - these inhabitants consisted rather less of dynamic, good-looking and cool young people. Who we met on the dancefloor were basically the whole bunch of farmers and other rural poulation of the area!

However, all these elderly, countrified people had so much fun - and so did actually we have as well! The dance hall was super crowded and the people were so eager to copy correctly the teacher's steps. Especially the elderly men were very excited when they (think they) got the steps right and thought they did a good job. They got even happier and very proud when the woman was able to follow and praised her. So I constantly got to hear "thank you, miss, excellent, very well done" - well, what shall I say, I have been dancing for ages and the moves weren't really challenging for a young mind :-)

St. Catherine's Church by night.

 

Friday, 6th of April:    

This morning were were up even earlier - a lot of plans for this day. Right after breakfast we were leaving for London.
But first of all it was again tea time in Ann's and Ed's bed.
While they were packing the car afterwards for their weekend trip to London, I went alone for a walk with Bronte. It was a very beautiful yet pretty cold morning.

Montacute House looked very beautiful in the morning sun.

 After breakfast I took some more pictures of Ann's and Ed's house.

 

It was still before 9 a.m. when we hit the road - with "Freddie", Ann's and Ed's campervan... which, by the way, camper fans can hire. [For more information click here]

First stop on our way towards London was another location governed by the National Trust, Stourhead, Edward's former work place.

 

 Parts of the movie "Pride & Prejudice" had been filmed here.

I wasn't aware of the fact that right between where my cousin lives and London we'd be going to pass the famous monument Stonehenge. So I was totally surprised by this stop which allowed me to quickly visit this impressive, prehistoric site. Since Edward still had his National Trust pass, we could even get in for free without even queueing with all those many tourists that had already arrived.

About two hours later we arrived in London city. Ann and Ed quickly dropped me off at my other cousin's, Ann's sister Emily's house. I quickly greeted Emily, said goodbye to Ann and Edward and then hurried towards our hotel where Marco would already wait for me :-)

All the stories and pictures from Marco's and my stay in London will be posted separately. So if you want to know how my holidays continued, please click here.